Dubai looks to renewables to meet future energy demand

Resource-hungry Dubai is aiming to increase the contribution solar and other renewables make to its energy mix under a 2030 energy strategy published this week.

The emirate is aiming to generate at least 5% of its energy from renewables by 2030 and to have cut its overall energy consumption in the same timeframe by 30% through the implementation of energy efficiency measures.

One step towards these goals is already underway: the first, 13MW phase of the planned 1GW Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum solar park is due for completion next year.

The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority also expects distributed rooftop solar power will make a contribution to Dubai’s power needs, at around 20%, or 2,500MW by 2030.

According to reports, Dubai’s overall energy demands are expected to increase by over 5% between now and 2021, driven by an anticipated population boom of over one million.

Looking back, 2014 was a year of convalescence for a PV industry still battered and bruised from a period of ferocious competition. End-market demand continued apace, with analysts towards the end of 2014 predicting the year would see between around 45 and 50GW of deployment. That has begun to feed through to the supplier end of the market, with all the main manufacturers announcing capacity expansions in 2015 and further ahead.

Although the past few years have proved extremely testing for PV equipment manufacturers, falling module prices have driven solar end-market demand to previously unseen levels. That demand is now starting to be felt by manufacturers, to the extent that leading companies are starting to talk about serious capacity expansions later this year and into 2015. This means that the next 12 months will be a critical period if companies throughout the supply chain are to take full advantage of the PV industry’s next growth phase.